They actually cut the library program. I am fortunate, but definately suffering from survivor's guilt. My program will remain in tact, I will be back at my site and in my cozy library home next year. Others are not so fortunate.

The district decided that libraries were important places for students to "hang out" in middle and high school, but that the elementary children could be served from classroom libraries. So sixteen elementary schools will no longer have library programming.

What the Board of Trustee's did not forsee was, that as classified employees, we remain in our jobs through seniority. So there were 16 employees who suddenly were moving from elementary positions into 9 middle school & high school positions. We are all shook up.

So what are the next steps? Education for the board as to what a library program actually is, explaining how and why they work. I guess I will be speaking to "item 8" at the board meetings for the next while. Libraries 3 minutes at a time.

Lately, I've been reading stories to the Junior High kids. It's my favorite time of the year, I get to go out to classes and read the California Young Reader Medal nominated books, in the catagory Picture Books for Older Readers. I love reading aloud. I love it when the class goes quiet and you know you have them spellbound.

What strikes me though, is how little experience these eleven to thirteen-year-olds have with being read to; somewhere along the line parents stopped reading to their children. These are not the children of migrant parents I am talking about. These are middle class, every advantage given, no class left untaken, no sport left unplayed, "My child should be in the accelerated classes", children.

I guess I am naive. Because I love to read I made sure to read to my children. Two bedtime stories a night, every night, until my youngest was 10. Together we read the Narnia books, "Mr. Pudgins", and "The Wobbly-Wheeled-Sputter-Putter-Popper". We read Aesop's fables, Brer Rabbit, Greek Myths, and Little Red Riding Hood. I may have missed the mark on many parenting duties, but I read to them. Yes, we watched TV, and played video games, and yet we still found time to read.

The children in my school have not heard the story of the "Tar-Baby" or the "Pied Piper of Hamlin". We are losing our cultural identity. Teachers and librarians cannot do it all. No matter how good the video is, Baby Einstein cannot take the place of "Read me a story" time. But then, perhaps these parents are the ones that were raised by Sesame Street. They were never taught the joy of being read to by their parents, and so the down cycle continues.

Can it be reversed? I don't know, all I can do is offer to read stories to classes, and for a little while, hold them spellbound.

I have to admit returning to school after the winter break was tough this year. Sometimes you just have to slog along, and just take it one day at a time. So I have to say, I have been fighting the blues.

Yesterday had been pretty much the day from "H. E. double hockey sticks". One of those days when no matter what you do you can't please anyone. Then right after school let out, I had one of those Golden Moments that make working at a school worthwhile. A student from the past came back.

She arrived with her father and asked to if she could speak with me. I could tell she was uncomfortable talking in front of the crowd of students in the library, so we stepped outside. She was carrying a large paper bag and when she turned to me she was terribly sad.

"This is so hard" she said.
"It's OK, tell me what's on your mind."

She opened the bag and said, "These are all the books I stole from you when I was a student here."
I looked in the bag and saw about $300.00 worth of books.

She explained she was doing a 12 step program and needed to make restitution to people she had hurt in the past.

I hugged this young woman, remembering the angry girl she had been. I was so honored that she had come to me to right a wrong that had been unknown to me. What a difficult thing to do. What courage that took. What a blessing she was to me.

The blues have lifted.

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Fat Kid Rules the World by K. L. Going
Young Adult (13+) Mature themes & language.

As a formerly fat person, who continually fights the battle, I can relate to the despair felt by Troy Billings.

Fat, depressed, 296 pound Troy is contemplating a jump from a subway platform, when the junkie thin, truely homeless, punk rock, artist god, Curt MacCrae screams into his life.
With the statement, "You owe me lunch." Curt quickly turns Troy's life upside-down by insisting that Troy is the new drummer for their new Punk Rock band, Rage/Tectonic. Small problems, Troy's last drum lesson was in 7th grade, the band is booked in less than a month, and Troy's stern, Marine Corp dad, has never let him attend a concert.
Powerfully drawn characters, razor sharp dialog, and the gritty setting all make for a reading experience that will move you as easily as the opening rifs of the Ramones Blitzkreig Bop.

This small video gave me chills and really made me think about the future. It absolutly showed me, once again, how provincial my thinking is. My students do not live in Aptos, they really are a part of a global community. How can I foster that?

How nice! School Library Learning 2.0 is beginning again. I hope all the new students will have as great a time doing the Winter 2.0 Fun course, as I did the Summer Fun. Believe it or not, I learned about tools that I actually use. I can't the count the classes I have taken that ended up in the, "Good in Theory, but Unpractical in Reality" pile of my life experience. From Blogs to Zoho the tools I learned this summer are being put to use in my library daily (or at least weekly).

It's interesting how quickly that mountaintop experience feeling fades. Monday evening I got to spread a little of the conference enthusiasm to my school's site council. I was invited to give a feedback report on CSLA Onterio. Everyone was very excited and happy for the good report. Then reality returns and it's back to the daily grind.
The bad news is, there really is no money at my school. They really aren't kidding! I got a chance to look at the books; direct donations are down, magazine sales are down, no-one bought tickets for the big car drawing, escript is a bust, they actually had to pay the fireworks people $8.00 for tickets that didn't get sold... all the fundraising efforts are doing very poorly this year. I felt positively embarrassed to ask for the money to cover the books I bought at the conference. So I am thankful the site council funded me at all; it looks like they gave me the lions share...now that's a sad comment if ever there was one.
What makes it so difficult is the difference between last year and this, last year we were flush, this year we are busted. Oh how I long for the days of steady state funding.

Tuesday morning, and I have finally gathered together all my thoughts on the CSLA conference. First, I had a great time. There is much to be said for getting together with like minded people. Just walking the halls and watching the people checking their schedules was fun. Meeting the vendors, and getting to see the products in 3D, not just catalogs, was fantastic. Meeting the SL2.0 folks in person was warm and wonderful. Hey Janet, Rob, & Kathleen, you guys are the best!

Second, I learned a lot. The money magnet session was really practical advise on how to get funding for the library. The poster sessions were really interesting, there is a lot of great stuff going on in the school libraries of California. I LOVED Kathleen Baxter, it was great to get advise on what to look for in non-fiction books. I think its a good time to weed my states books. I most likely have the Minnisota book she slammed. I now have her e-mail and after the holiday I want to get in touch with her to get more practical advise on middle school titles.

The one thing that gave me pause for concern...No youth. Where were all the young librarians? I had this idea that SJSU and was turning out some of the younger set. I saw far too many orthopedic shoes and not enough high heels. We need to start recruiting in a big way. We need to turn our attention to bringing in the harvest.

All things happen for a reason.

Last summer when I was at the dump, I picked up the historical German magazines, which I blogged about on July 11th. Then in September I blogged about my concerns for a young man. All this time I have been struggling to make a connection with this boy. About two weeks ago "Aldo" and I were talking, when I discovered his interest in World War II, Nazi's, and the Holocaust. I showed him the magazines...you should have seen his eyes. He immediately understood their significance. When I had him put on the white gloves so he could turn the fragile pages, he was so respectful. I pulled out, Rose Blanche, Cats in Krasinski Square & Legend of the Yellow Star. He began to read. Connection established.

Then comes last Friday. "Aldo" comes into the library, where he is sitting drawing some stuff that could get him into trouble. I gently let him know that it's probably not a good idea to draw those particular patterns. He looks at me and says, "Can I talk to you? Can I talk to you in private?" So we step outside and "Aldo" proceedes to tell me he is having a really bad day. Some kids had been calling him names at lunch and throwing things at him. He tells me that, though he really wanted to fight, he turned and walked away. I told him that I was so proud of him. Then he says, "When those kids pulled your braids when you were little, didn't it make you want to fight?" Chills ran through me, as we talked about appropriate ways to deal with harrassment.

You just never know what kinds of things are going to affect your relationships with students. Who knew that Hitler, Carmen Deedy,and George & Dan from my youth, were all going to meet in 2007, and work to positivly influence this troubled young man!

The bookfair opened and two girls were immediately suspended for theft. And so the the Sword of Damocles fell. What is it about the trinket trash that causes such a stir? Have these students never seen a pen before? Are glittery pens so amazing that one needs $50.00 worth of them?

The good that came out of this is that one student, faced with the moral dilemma of staying silent, and letting her friends get away with the theft, or telling, and facing the wrath of her group, chose honesty. That choice gives me hope! Integrity, ethics, and moral fortitude are alive and well in Aptos.

Book Fairs, ya gotta love 'em. They certainly are a double edged sword. The students just love all the books & trinket trash, and I certainly love the funds they raise, but oh my gosh the stress! There's something about crowd control that drives me nuts! Being responsible for all that cash floating around is SCARY. Of course its during the bookfair that the teachers always want that special lit set that is stored out in the back of beyond. I am pretty good at multi-tasking but during the book fair I just shut down mentally.

On the positive side, this year my library club members have really taken on the fair. They made the cutest shirts to advertise the fair. The theme, "Welcome to Wondeland" supports the All School Read of Alice in Wonderland. My contest is to Make a Mad Hatter Hat. I am giving out gift certificates to the fair for the "Most Outrageous" and "Most Beautiful" hats made out of paper plates & bowls.

I hope its a success. I can sure use the money!

I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about this kid. He is a twelve year old American of Mexican ancestry. He has been in this country since his birth, gone to my district's schools, and currently reads at a first grade level. He is proud, proud, proud, a leader, and cannot admit to himself that he has a reading problem. It is not cognitive ability either, he makes a concious choice to fail. What am I going to do with this boy? He is angry, (a bit of me says he has a right to be!)unresponsive and at a turning point. The adults on campus all know this boy and if something goes missing, his is the backpack they search first...
Every fiber of my being wants to reach out and help this kid, but HOW? Am I wasting my energy? Do I just stand by and allow him to fail, or do I keep banging my head against this wall of pride? I have no answers today.

I was tooling around the net and found this ab fab image generator that takes a photo and creates a sketch. www.dumpr.net

Good Morning to you,
We're all in our places.
With bright, shining, faces.
This is the way,
To start a new day!

My mother used to sing that song to me in the mornings to get me out of bed on school days. This past week, as I was going through my library orientation program with the 7th graders, I looked out across a sea of bright, shining faces, some eager to learn, some already totally jaded, and I remembered my mother.

You see, each year in my presentation I invoke the ghost of my mother. I open up and tell the kids the story of my childhood. How I was the funny looking kid in braids. How I was the kid with cooties, the awful nicknames I had, and about the physical torture I endured during my elementary school days. As I share these memories, I can tell the bullies from the victims by their reactions. I talk about the lessons I learned from my experiences, how I learned not to cry in front of bullies, and how I learned that my mother was a liar. "Stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me." Mom was full of aphorisms. Why do I do this in my orientation you may ask?

In my library I have no rules. I do have three standards of conduct. For while rules were made to be broken, standards can only be met. My standards of conduct are:

1. The library is a quiet place for reading and study.
2. The library is a safe place mentally, physically and verbally.
3. The library is a place to care for and respect books.

I tell of my childhood to illustrate being safe verbally. My library is a safe place for all the funny looking kids on campus. I assure all the students, that internally, there is not a student on campus that doesn't think that they are not funny looking. I let them know right up front, that while they may get away with calling names out on the grounds, because of my personal history, they will not get away with it around me. It always gets real quiet during this part of my schpiel. It touches them. It is the beginning of relationship.

Relationship is why libraries work. You have to be in relationship to advise students. You have to be in relationship to recommend books to students. You have to be in relationship to motivate students to read. So those of you who only use your orientation time to tell kids where the fiction section is, I would advise you to be vulnerable, and use the time to establish relationship.

Sunday mornings used to be a time spent sitting in bed with the Sunday newspaper scattered across the covers, my husband reading the hard news & the editorials, I had the Living section & the classifieds, and the kids read the comics. Those days are gone. Sad to say, I don't even take a paper anymore. Today I warm my thighs with my laptop, to catch up on the blogs from the bloglines account. The cozy togetherness is gone, but I guess the reading is the same. Although I do miss the writing skill. Typos abound on the blogs and poorly worded sentences are the accepted norm. Just goes to show the editors and proof readers really did do an important job back in the day when linotype was king.

One of the blogs I read regularly is Dave Warlick's. In his "More Ranting about Information" he commented and linked to a teacher's blog Unknow Future which makes the point that blogging is not just about the writing, but it is about the reading. This then inspired Dave to add the thought that it is about the conversation.

The conversation, AH HA, that in a nut shell is the essence of blogging. What I want my students who contribute to the blogs at school to experience is the "Wow" moment when someone responds to their writing. The whole point of blogging is not just the writing, not just the reading, but must include the responding. Otherwise we might as well just be diarists, writing privately. So you and I, as the reader, play the most important role in the blogging experience. We can't just sit on the side lines, we must respond. Get involved.

It was a good day today. Of course my library is still in opening mode, tail ends of textbooks litter the tables. Will I have enough textbooks for everyone? So far so good, but goodness me, I can see we are going to have to do emergency orders PDQ!

Today was my first day of training my library aides, I do not have enough students assigned yet, I have a couple of periods where there is only one aide, and when it gets hoppin' in the library, I need a minimum of two to keep the library going smoothly. I was going over the overview of the quarter, talking about censorship and the ALA Library Bill of Rights, the projects I expect them to do, and all things they will be learning. During one period, my aide and I got to talking about summer reading. We were exchanging our summer read lists, when she made the following comment. "You know I really can't believe it, usually during summer I don't do anything related to school, and this summer I read four books and I can't wait for to pick up the new Stephanie Meyers book!" This from a girl who I had to pull eye teeth to get to read at the beginning of last year. I tell you I was doing internal summersaults. She's READING FOR FUN!!!

Tomorrow is the first day the teachers will be back on campus. This is where the rubber meets the road. All my plans, hopes, and ideas will either successfully cruise along or crash and burn. I want to set up a time on Tuesday to teach the teachers about RSS feeds and train them to use the wiki to schedule. I have shown several earlybird teachers and have gotten favorable comments from them.

I've been getting more questions about my plan to use a wiki to schedule time in my library. I find it interesting that I keep getting the comment, "You mean someone could just go in and delete someone else out of the library?". Now I have to admit, that thought never occurred to me. I guess in theory that could happen, but then we have always done the paper schedule in pencil, and the option to cross out or erase off the book has been available for years. I think that has happened once in 18 years, and that was a misunderstanding on my part!

On Friday, I spent a part of the afternoon scheduling classes for my Library Orientation. The process seems pretty smooth. You do need to know a time frame, but once you put one in, it gives you an autofill option, so once you get going it goes even quicker. I also like that if you are planning on coming in multiple days in a row you just need to enter once, and it will fill in all the days.

Sometimes I really should be doing laundry, but I find myself having a too good a time being creative. Here's my latest book trailer. Feel free to link.
Photos used under a Creative Commons Licence

Well, it's back to work in the morning. I am really excited to be returning. I have so many new ideas for this year. The beginning of a new school year is like a fresh piece of paper with nothing written upon it. It has the potential to be a masterpiece or just another crumpled wad in the waste can. I like new beginnings; there will be new teachers, new students, new stuff and so many opportunities for learning. It will be good to touch base with all my old favorites, see how the students have grown over the summer, find out what the staff did.

New School Year Resolutions:
This year I will not expect any "ease into the program". I will anticipate a full schedule from day one. I will make time for myself! I will ask for help. I will accept help graciously and not be overly critical. I will continue to blog.

I hope I get some sleep tonight!

"I have always dependeded on the kindness of strangers." Blanche Dubois/Tennesee Williams, "A Streetcar Named Desire"

I am always amazed when I am confronted by the generousity of people. This year I will be opening my school using the theme "Welcome to Wonderland", and promoting an all school read of Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. On the calib listserv I made a request that if anyone had an extra copy, to send it to me. When I got a response back from Scott Bloom,a sales rep for Greenwood publishing, he responded back, not as a sales rep, but as a man with an idea. He proceeded to tell me that in memory of a teacher, Neola Sommerville(1906-2001), who taught with his mother in the San Jose Unified School District, that he was donating 30 Copies of Alice for my program.

I am truly overwhelmed by this gesture. This is one of those PASS IT FORWARD moments.
So Neola Sommerville, I salute your memory!

A new entry into the blogosphere is Dave Keane, author of the Joe Sherlock series. In his blog he is talking about the fact that children are not reading for fun these days. A sad state of affairs in my mind. He links to an interesting article from the SF Chronicle which talks about the Harry Potter effect, which made kids read for fun!

Having been around the libraries before good ole Harry, I can attest that JK did indeed have a positive effect on boys and reading. Prior to HP, I could not give away a book longer than 100 pages. I think the effect is starting to run its course though. I see fewer and fewer students reading long books. I am happy that Deathly Hallows is about to be released (I have to find out if Dumbledore comes back as a ghost.) Hopefully Potter mania will hit once again.

If you were a junior high student would this make you want to read this book?

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